Homeowners might see a 5 percent increase to the city tax rate to help fund a proposed $895.5 million budget that includes increased police staffing and additional dollars for streets and bond projects.

City Manager Tommy Gonzalez presented the proposed budget for 2017-18 to the City Council on Monday, the first in a series of budget workshops this week.

The proposed budget represents a decrease of about a one-half percent from the current $903.2 million budget, but includes a proposed 4-cent increase to the tax rate.

So let’s see, a five percent increase in taxes for homeowners, but a one and half percent decrease in the budget.

Preliminary valuations of single-family homes by the El Paso Central Appraisal District remained little changed for the second year in a row, but values for apartments jumped 15 percent and commercial property by 7 percent.

So the budget is down, property values are up a little, from apartments and commercial property, and yet tax rates are up?

Here, lemme do a little ciphering here on the back of this bevnap.

By golly, I believe we’ve got fewer taxpayers!

How can that be? We’ve got a new Triple A ballpark. Downtown apartments. Boutique hotels. All those Quality of Life projects we’ve already done, like the Plaza de Los Lagartos, the zoo expansion, and a digital wall, whatever that is. And all those other Quality of Life projects in the pipeline, like that swell new downtown arena and the new swimming pools and that $10 million soccer field complex that’s costing us $24 million, bus rapid transit, and the trolley.

Someday, eventually, the City is going to have to admit that it’s been pursuing a failed policy. I wonder if there will be anyone left to hear them.

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4 comments

That’s the City Council’s solution to your math problem, and it is brilliant. If nobody is present when a tree falls in the forest there is no sound heard so, arguably, the tree never fell. Likewise, if El Paso becomes just another “City of Dust” because we’ve been given so many incentives to leave, then the debt problem for our local government is solved. What tree? What debt problem? (Aside: It might be prudent to not be one of the last to leave.) I only wish the solutions to all math problems were this easy.

El Paso has been recognized as the best run city in Texas, according to a personal finance website.
The recognition came in a study of rankings released Monday by Wallethub.com.
Other positive recognition El Paso has received recently includes the best large city for families, according to the Apartment List website.
It also was ranked among thebest places to live in the nation in 2017 by U.S. News and World Report.
The city’s drivers also were recognized as the 12th best among the nation’s 75 largest metro areas, according to QuoteWizard, a Seattle-based insurance comparison website.

Well, at least we know that the larger media outside of El Paso is just as terrible with facts as the local media. Unless, of course, having some of the highest taxes coupled with some of the lowest wages makes a city a “best place to live”? If that’s a criteria then we should be #3 nationwide. As for safe drivers, tell that to the people who have been killed here in the last ten years walking, biking, changing tires and pushing their cars. El Paso is fast becoming THE place to drink and drive with little or no consequences, no matter how many people you kill doing it.